On 2008-Jul-6, at 14:59 , Brantley Coile wrote:
I remember the day I first saw a file magic file. I welcomed it because for the first time I didn't have access to the source code. Those were the days when you had to have $45k to get the source.
Closer to $100K for most people. I had great fun writing nroff (yup, *n*roff) output device tables as binary blobs to interface with the non-source UNIXen of the day. And the Convergent Technologies X.25 binary code was a wonder to configure/tune as an end user :-P
Remember kids: UNIX source code (BSD, really) wasn't free until 1994 (give or take a bit). You haven't lived until you've resolved device driver configuration and ordering problems when trying to link a binary version of SunOS 2 or 3 (no, not Solaris :-). Or even better, an NBI VME 68K box pretending it's a UNIBUS VAX.
Is alt.folklore.computers still alive? 99% of the list traffic [cs]hould be redirected there.
-- (creaky/grumpy olde) lyndon
